Andrusier’s entire universe was the north London suburb of Pinner, where he grew up with his Jewish parents: a larger-than-life father and a mother it seems fair to call “long-suffering”. In fact, quite a lot of the book is a beautifully bittersweet memoir about Andrusier’s conflicted relationship with his father, from whom he learned the appeal of collecting—although his dad’s taste ran more towards postcards of Eastern European synagogues that were destroyed by the Nazis.